Archive for March, 2012

In 2005, a movie called “The Corporation” was released. In that movie they told of the Water Rights Movement of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Apparently in the year 2000 the water was privatized and Law #2029 gave the water rights to a private company. The broadness of this law debatably gave the company control of people’s irrigation systems, personal water wells, and even the rainwater. The protest movement of the Coördinator questioned whether God’s rainwater from the sky could ever be properly or rightly owned. Eventually the people of Cochabamba had their own water rights restored to them, The “Corporation” book/movie was certainly highlighting the overreaching control of corporations. I have since been informed that the rainfall water rights of Western America are controlled by the Government and related water corporations.

In 1626 Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan from the Carnasee Indians for gifts with a value of 60 Dutch guilders. While this has variously been described as being worth $24.00, when it’s truly adjusted for inflation it’s a sum more than $1000.00 in today’s market. The nearby Raritan Indians supposedly sold Staten Island at least six times. This probably means one of two things: the Indians either knew what they we doing or they didn’t understand what property rights were. There’s no evidence that either party attempted to swindle the other but it seems to me that the Indians must have at least pondered what was going on. Did they in fact wonder whether they could also sell the moon, or the sunshine and the stars? Did they think the land was being leased? Again how can land be owned? Does anyone anywhere have the deed from God? Did Mother Nature give anyone the title to those resources? Isn’t it really just a manmade invention.

Mankind has an inordinate desire to own things and this has even been seen in our Spirituality and Religions. Many people want to OWN God, to make him their own. Religion has become a possession. “In my church….”, “In my religion….”, “In our beliefs….”!!! It’s a natural expression of wanting to belong to something and to have that thing belong to us.

I feel that we should release our feelings from the temporal qualities of this world and realize that we are just passing through. Yes we should adhere to God’s laws and we should be part of the community and we should love one another but beliefs of ownership polarizes us. You and me, yours and mine, us and them are just examples of claiming God’s world as our own. Mankind frequently does that to control others and to control resources.

It also undermines our real relationship with God because we put others up as intermediates to God and others put themselves up as intermediaries to God. No person, group, institution, or organization has greater connection to God than your own self. God wants me to ‘remind’ you that your greatest connection to God is your own Self to God. No one anywhere can speak for your needs better than your own Self to God.

Lastly, I hope that we can realize that we walk through God’s rain, we travel through his Land. The rivers and mountains and streams are his domain. God’s plan is his alone and we can’t own it, change it, amend it or control it. We are stewards of God’s land and we can walk through it but we will never own it.

“Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books”